


In the Dead of Night, You Went Dark on Me

by awkwardCerberus



Series: HideKane That Should Have Happened [5]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: #LetThemJustBeHappy2016, Angst and Feels, Based on a Tumblr Post, Kakuja, M/M, Nightmares, Shironeki | White-haired Kaneki, bc why the fuck not, idek, the sad things in life usually are, ugh why do I always write nightmare fics?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 00:04:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6632515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardCerberus/pseuds/awkwardCerberus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>" ... But I found in you what was lost in me<br/>In a world so cold and empty<br/>I could lie awake just to watch you breathe<br/>In the dead of night, you went dark on me ... "</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Dead of Night, You Went Dark on Me

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Dark on Me" by Starset.
> 
> Ooooohh boyyyy i really need to tone it down with all these hidekane playlists im pretty ive listened to every single one in existence like 3 times by now. But w/e. Have at thee (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧
> 
> Also im slowly realizing that nightmare fics may be my new specialty...

Based off [this post](http://sleepykunimi.tumblr.com/post/97909389050/tatara-of-the-aogiri-you-know-what-me-and-my%20) right here.

* * *

To say that a night like tonight was rare was an exaggeration, but to also say it was a regular occurrence was also an exaggeration. Nights like tonight just kind of happened on their own time when they felt like it. Everything would be fine for a few weeks, and then they'd pop up right out of the blue. Some of them would be manageable, but some of them were too hard, drawing out bottled up emotions like a syringe to a vile. Like tonight, though it wasn't a surprise really.

He didn't remember how he got there, or what had led up to the moment, but all he knew was that he was holding the body of he didn't know who, draped in a sheet that came from he didn't know where, and walking down a street he didn't recognize, for some reason he had yet to figure out.

There was CCG everywhere, investigators and officers alike all pulling corpses from the snow. And they all stopped their pulling of myriad limbs and body parts to look at him. They all were looking at him for a purpose he still had yet to discover.

Finally his answer came, with a cold burst of wind that blew away the white cloth from the body in his arm. And he knew. He wanted to stop and scream and cry. He wanted to fall down in the snow and hold the face of the man in his arms to his own, and he wanted to kiss the cold skin until his lips bled.

But he didn't. He just kept walking. Helicopters tore at the air above and the beam of a searchlight fanned itself out in his path as he looked down at the face in his arms. He looked at that face and his world shattered down around him.

Memories of bright hazel eyes and blonde hair like sunshine and warm smiles. He was carrying those memories—once warm and bright, now cold and dead—in the form of a corpse in his arms.

_Let's go home._

Everything was dark now. Dark, and cold, and wet, and reeking of blood. His whole body was heavy, like there weights chained to his back.

Everything hurt, but there was more than one kind of pain. The first was soft, and came in waves that rolled through him, under his skin and up through his bones. But the second, was hard and sharp. Hungry, and empty, and shredding up his insides like some rabid animal.

From somewhere down the dark tunnel, there was a light. Warm and happy, beaming with life, and slowly walking towards him.

And then this light was in front of him. And there was a face—the face of the man he had just been carrying—surrounded by long beams of sweet sunshine, And this warmth, this light, was holding him. He, who thought all this time that the man would hate him for the monster that he was. The man was holding this broken, shaken monster, and ignoring all of that.

I already knew, man! Who cares about that?

_Let's just go home already._

...

Hide woke up to the glass slider in the bedroom slamming open, and something like scales grinding against one another. He pulled himself up off the couch, where he had fallen asleep after promising both himself and Kaneki, "just one more episode", (although the show he had been watching had since become a long litany of infomercials). He pulled his phone up off the coffee table and looked at the time, blinking at the light of the screen. It was barely past four o'clock in the morning.

Another sound of grating exoskeleton, this time combined with hushed whimpers. Hide stood up off the couch and walked into the bedroom. The metallic tang of blood drifted throughout the room, but the blond wasn't worried.

Hide stepped out onto the balcony carefully, not wanting to startle the ghoul, but didn't walk out more than a step or two from the doorframe. He smiled and greeted softly, "yo, Kaneki. Couldn't sleep, huh?"

So casual, so normal. It made Kaneki's heart ache down in the pits of his soul.

Long centipede tails trailed out across the tiny balcony, and the kakuja mask bumped against the concrete when Kaneki lowered his head. His whole body sunk in on itself, legs and arms curled in and head lowered against the floor. Another tremor rattled its way through the ghoul, the sound of the centipede kagune like a rattlesnake's rattle echoing off the air. Sporadically, amongst the strangled sounds and garbled incoherencies coming from the ghoul, numbers vaguely mentioned themselves in no particular order.

Hide sighed and shoved his phone into the pocket of his pajama pants, venturing a couple more steps towards the ghoul. "Did you have the same dream again?"

The only answer he got was an incoherent string of guttural, half-formed words and empty noises, but Hide had grown so accustomed to these things that he knew there was an affirmative answer in there somewhere. The blonde sat down on the concrete floor, leaning back against the glass of the door, and holding out his hand like an offering.

Kaneki's head snapped up and he lunged over to the hand, reaching up to squeeze at the wrist with thin, pale fingers. When it finally registered in his mind that the offered hand was indeed a gesture of affection, he bumped his head against it like a cat—nuzzling against it desperately.

Hide gave a small smile, closing his fingers carefully around the kakuja mask, speaking in that gentile tone that somehow managed to cut through all the pain, "Kaneki. You don't need the mask anymore."

So soft, so sweet. And it always worked somehow.

The mask began to give way under Hide's touch, until it turned into something akin to sand and evaporated up into the night air. The kakugan underneath was the same piercing red it always was. Regardless, Hide continued to cup his hand around Kaneki's cheek and stroke his thumb along the red veins that crackled out in a mosaic around the black and red eye.

Kaneki looked up at Hide, his eyes broken and barren and he closed the space between them and pressed his lips hungry to the blond's. The first kiss was all hunger, starving and defeated as Kaneki's teeth allowed themselves to sink into the tender flesh of Hide's lips. Hide was silent as Kaneki sucked the blood out of his mouth in desperate swallows. Eventually, he did flinch, but only when the ghoul pulled away with a small section of flesh between his teeth.

The second kiss was all regret, and apology. Kaneki kissed Hide this time to make up for they damage of the first. He was so gentle that his touches were ghosts against the torn skin of the blond's lips. The ghoul lapped away the blood with his tongue, hoping that in some way, his tears could staunch the bleeding.

Finally, Hide pushed him away, with a gentle hand pressed to Kaneki's bare chest. He looked into the ghoul's grey eyes—and Kaneki noticed for the first time in a very long time—that there was the faintest sign of regret buried deep in Hide's hazel eyes.

It was this small little drop of regret that made Kaneki finally settle into the curve of the blond's body. The kakuja curled itself up around the two of them, until the centipede-like tentacles each began to dissipate of their own accord. HIde's gentle hands petted at Kaneki's pale hair, holding him against his chest as they both rode out the moment into a silence.

"Kaneki, listen," this was some variant of the soft tone Hide had. There was a small note of seriousness floating on the top that some how managed to coincide with the regret in his eyes, "I wanted to apologize for something. So...please listen."

Immediately, Kaneki looked up. His mind raced with a thousand negative thoughts per second. Trivial what-ifs fleeting through his head like bees in a field. But, just as fast as they came on, they were all silenced by another one of Hide's hands holding the side of his face, stroking at the bones of his cheeks tenderly.

Hide smiled honestly, if not a little bittersweet, "remember when that first time you brought me to Anteiku, and I kept asking you who that girl you like was? And then you pointed out Rize, and I kept telling you to ask her out, and you finally did? Well, Rize was that ghoul who made you a ghoul...and that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't gone on that date with her."

"Hide, what are you—"

"I'm saying that this," Hide waved a hand in a vague circle around the two of them, "all of this—everything that's happened to you since that day—was all because I kept pushing you into asking out Rize. I realize that now."."

There was a long pause, before Hide finally spoke again. When he did, however, his voice was shaky and unsure, like he was forcing himself into believing what he said, "but I'm okay with knowing that now."

Kaneki was shaking his head, gripping at Hide's shoulders and at the fabric of his shirt. What was Hide even thinking? Nothing was his fault, not ever. Hide—pure, sweet, compassionate Hide, who had almost died just trying to get Kaneki to smile again, and who had almost died in Kaneki's arms as he ran them both away to safety—had done nothing. How could he think that?

But, Kaneki's denial was more for himself than anyone else.

"You can't—no, that's...that's—how could you ever believe that...that this is...your fault?" Kaneki's concerns were lost in his sobs as he continued to bury his face into the blond's shirt.

"See, Kaneki?" Hide smiled softly—that goddamn, beautiful, smile that was warmer and brighter than the Sun—and pressed a kiss into the ghoul's hair, "we both have regrets. So please don't be so hard on yourself anymore."

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd so mistakes are mine.


End file.
